
The Silence
Description
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A Poetry Book Society Spring Recommendation 2024
'The days have no names.
The day they count the dead,
the day they closed the doors,
turned off the lights.
We're still here in the silence,
hearing tree-talk,
the wind's secrets,
the company of birds.'
('The Year of the Dead')
The poems in Gillian Clarke's The Silence begin during lockdown, to whose silences Clarke listens so attentively that other voices emerge. As the book progresses, that silence deepens, in the poems about her mother and childhood, about the Great War and its aftermaths, and in her continuing attention to Welsh places and names, and the rituals which make that world come in to focus. In these scrupulous, musical poems, Clarke finds consolation in how silence makes room for memory and for the company of the animal- and bird-life which surrounds us. These poems, compulsively returning to key images and formative moments, echo and bring back other ways of living to the book's present moment.
Reviews / Votes
'The Silence is not concerned only with the pandemic. Gillian Clarke's writing frequently offsets her awareness of the naturalness and depth of her roots in rural Wales with the sense of strangeness which comes from having English as her "mother-tongue". These meditations are delicately handled in the collection, and particularly striking in the context of environmental catastrophe. What now threatens the landscape which Clarke has farmed and nurtured, in life as in verse, are shadows which roll across the globe, turning, for many people, the possibility of belonging anywhere into wishful thinking. The Silence is full of poems which remind us of the importance of place, and the demand of its words and silences to be listened to.'Carol Rumens, The Guardian Poem of the Week 'Rich with repetition and punctuated by potent page breaks, this extraordinarily incisive collection creates space to reflect upon how the pandemic has transformed us and what, in the face of loss and quiet, our hearts have learned.'
Jo Clement, The Poetry Society Bulletin 'Clarke's skill lies in using simple language to record moments of great beauty, no less lovely for sometimes being familiar. She reminds us of the comfort to be drawn from paying attention to nature'
Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian 'There is a numinous quality to this book, a kind of spiritual attention which reveals, by silence and contemplation, the wondrous.'
Stephen Sexton, Irish Times 'This is a collection which deserves the reader's full attention. The poems may at times prove uneasy, they will make us think and maybe demand reading again, and again. But they will remain with us.'
James Caruth, The North 'What a pleasure to spend a book's length with Gillian Clarke's luminous lyrics. ... With the deft surprise of her images, her keen observations, and canny storytelling, she still has so much to teach new poets and so much to say.'
Zoe Brigley, Poetry Wales
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Person
Gillian Clarke was National Poet of Wales 2008 - 2015.
Carcanet has published her Selected Poems (1985), Letting in the Rumour (1989, Poetry Book Society Recommendation), The King of Britain's Daughter (1993), Collected Poems (1997), Five Fields (1998) and Making the Beds for the Dead (2004).
Listen to Gillian in conversation with Nadia Kingsley on the Fair Acre Press DIVERSIFLY podcastabout her writing process, what poetry is, and the Welsh language.
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